Our issue is determining the importance of extracurricular activities in secondary schools public schools. Extracurricular activities, or after school programs, are nonacademic activities taken outside of the classroom that are pertinent to a student's life. The issue is important because when a schools funding is cut due to inconveniences, the first elements to be taken away from the school are the extracurricular programs since they are expendable when compared to academics. While extracurricular activities provide students social and education opportunities that pertain to his or her interests, they also have been thought to have several other benefits that cannot be obtained through the standard set of core classes. For example, interscholastic sports provide students with physical and healthy activity to develop a healthy lifestyle, teamwork skills, and determination to play and complete to the best of his or her abilities. Student led organizations such as student counsel or event planning committees give students real life situation to develop organization, time management, and leadership skills. Fine arts programs have been researched and found to enhance students' academic performance while service learning activities allow students to help his or her community through volunteer work. We wanted to examine and research these positive benefits for extracurricular activities since we feel they are an essential part of secondary schools and should not be on the chopping block for budget cuts.
II. Research Summary
For my research, I focused on finding the benefits of the fine arts programs in schools because they are the target of budget cuts in schools along with other extra curricular activities. The fine arts is a broad subject area, covering visual arts, music, theater programs, and any dance programs a school offers. My research covers a broad ranges of opinions on the matter. Some articles have a strong bias toward supporting the arts and preserving the programs where others present issues from both extremes with counter arguments stating why the art programs should be removed from schools. I found a few unbiased sources which took the form of research reports done at university that presented a large sum of data, most of which displayed that art programs do have positive benefits in mathematics, reading, standardized testing, spatial intelligence, and even in behavior. I used three sources from journal or newspaper sources, one of them was an editorial from the NYTimes. The focus of my sources was different as well, where some focused on the benefits of arts in one respect where others focused on matters such as how the art programs have changed over time. - mattguertin
For my portion of our project, my research focus was on the benefits of interscholastic sport activities. Among all the extracurricular activities being targeted from budget cuts within school systems, sports are always on the top of the list of programs to cut. My research, however, provides evidence that displays the physical and mental benefits, as well as the achievement within the classroom, that student athletes get from participating in sport programs. Out of the five articles I have found and summarized, each article tackles certain issues regarding the benefits of sports, which include how sports aid against child obesity rates, reduce the drop out rate within high schools, and provide students with opportunities that they would not have been able to be exposed to if it was not for the program within their school. Other articles also present new policies that schools are resorting to in order save both the school budget and the sport programs. All my sources vary as far as their main focus and approach to how they defend sport programs, but all strive to show how important sports are to the school, community and individual student. - aristanton
For my section in our group project, I focused on extracurricular activities and after school programs, and researched how they improve academic performance. My research covered multiple opinions on how these activities effect students because proving this matter is very difficult. I was able to look at the advantages and disadvantages of extracurricular activities and came to a common consensus that most of the reviews on student organizations were positive. There were a few negative comments in one of the articles I looked at that felt extracurricular activities can lead to alcohol and drug abuse, but that opinion was override by my other articles that had nothing but positive things to say about these programs. I carefully examined each article and summarized its main idea and came up with my own opinion for the article. In my opinion, all of the articles restated the same general idea that extracurricular organizations led to a positive academic career and even improve other things such as likeliness to attend college and attendance rate at schools. Many articles believe that having after school programs causes children to be in school more often, because in many schools, if classes are not attended then they are not allowed to attend the activity after school. Extracurricular programs are a reward after a hard day of school and all of these activities improve academic improvement in one way or another. - marisamerola
My portion of this project was on volunteering programs in public middle and high schools. Many schools, especially in less affluent districts, have incorporated volunteerism programs into their curriculum. Also, many schools have made community service an obligation and many more have made it into an after school activity. I used the library's databases to find the majority of my articles. I was surprised to find actual academic studies that looked into benefits of young people volunteering in their community. I found it interesting in the ERIC article even in the 1980's similar benefits were expected by youth volunteering to what are seen today. Time published an article that spotlighted the City Year program and its efforts to start volunteering programs early in school. The opposing viewpoint article was a great source of statistics that finally gave some numbers to look at when talking about youth volunteering. Finally, the last journal articles that I looked up were great studies into youth volunteering and its effects on the social development of adolescents. Many studies came to the same conclusion that teenagers engaging in community service were more likely to participate in volunteering, be involved in the community and have a more developed sense of social obligation. - JessicaLopes
As for my section in the project, I researched the relationship between extracurricular activities and delinquent behavior in high school students. For the most part, researchers have conducted studies that show positive effects of after school programs like students performing better academically and socially in school . Yet, I am taking it a step further by asking if students are more likely to commit crimes and drink outside of school based on their experiences in school-based programs. Throughout my time researching, I was able to find a variety of articles that express positive and negative views towards the relationship of activities and deviant behavior. Since I am not taking a particular stand on the topic, I view myself as a journalist who is presenting from all sides information to the audience in order for them to make their own decision. A majority of the articles are scientific studies that show students, who take part in athletics or service projects, having lower levels of delinquency due to their commitment and social bonds. Meanwhile, I have heavily opinionated articles that discuss how after school activities do not have significant effects on decreasing crime rates but rather increase these rates. Extracurricular activities are a great way for students to stay in tune with themselves and not succumbing to negative peer influences. After school programs, however, can cause deviant behavior if the programs are not kept in check or regulated. - ccapizzano
II. Group Product Overview
For our presentation our group plans to do the following:
Introduction (~5 minutes):
To introduce our topic, our group plans to ask a series of questions to the class about high school. We plan to first ask questions about facts and topics the class was bound to learn in school such as the dates of the civil war, finding the area of a sphere, or knowing the themes presented in Hamlet. There may be a select few in the class who remember, but probably not too many. After those questions are presented, we plan to ask about experiences in extra curricular activists such as participating on a sports team, planning for homecoming, or participating in a program such as DECA. Hopefully, there will be a more positive response to the second set of questions so our group can make a point that students remember those extra curricular experiences as opposed to the core classes. We will then present our topic and briefly state each of our research questions
Teaching Activity (~15 minutes):
For this section of our presentation, each group member will present three multiple choice questions on his or her specific extra curricular area. The questions will be presented in a PowerPoint and the class will try to guess the answer to the facts. After the class guesses, the answer will be displayed and then explained. We hope to find data that is surprising and new to the class so they can hopefully learn new information. The questions will summarize the data collected from the group members to answer his or her research questions.
Conclusion (~5 minutes):
To summarize our findings, the group will discuss the benefits of each of the topic areas. For example, participating in sports helps students learn how to be physically fit and healthy, student led organizations improve leadership skills and collaboration where fine art programs enhance creativity and self-discipline. If there is time left, we will ask the class about their experiences and if they have any questions about our findings.
III. Visual Representations
IV. Research Questions and Reference Summaries
Main Question: How are extracurricular activities important in American secondary schools?
Majority Opinion:
After completing our research and discussing our topic, our group has come to the general consensus that extracurricular activities play an important role in each high school. Therefore, they should not be targeted when budget cuts occur. Depending on the individual extracurricular activity chosen by each student, the benefits vary from overall health to self discipline. We all has some preconceptions about our activities' benefits, which provided us with a direction to research. However, despite the preconceived notions, we were surprised with the results we found, not realizing how often this topic has been researched and the broad array of results provided. We learned that this topic is very vast and can be broken down in so many ways from broad aspects such as level of education (high schools, middle schools, elementary schools), to looking at the students of different regions, states and cities. There are many factors we found as well concerning our subtopics where researched tested to see if student-led organizations or athletics, for example, effected drop-out rate, grades, testing, social characteristics, etc. We found data that both supported extracurricular activities and some that thought they were unnecessary, or they just didn't have any benefits. These opposing points help to obtain a broad understanding of the issue and the possibility to provide rebuttals if we ever were asked to argue whether extracurricular activities are beneficial or not.
Individual Opinions:
As a long-time participant in the fine arts programs myself, I went into my research with a heavy bias. For general research, this is not a practical habit, but I feel it helped me find reputable sources on my matter as well as properly identify differing views. In high school for my Capstone project, I focused on if music improved spatial intelligence, mathematics and self-discipline. Along with research I did, for my final product I gave out a sptail intellegence test to kids in music classes and those who were not, collecting data from about 20-30 students in each. After compiling the scores, the scatter plot I made has a best fit line that stated the more years of music education, the higher the spatial intelligence. Even with that work in high school, this project allowed me to look through new and reputable databases for professional articles,which was a great and positive experience. Seeing as how they already started to cut music programs back in my hometown of Coventry, I was further inspired to explore the benefits of those arts programs being taken away. I understand many school are struggling financially and I do not think they should just terminate programs, yet I do not think they should not take action either. Instead of taking hasty action, I think decisions involving extracurricular activities should be better thought out, because the programs do not need to be cut completely as the only solution. - mattguertin
I took an especially passionate approach to this project and my specific question of sports, because all throughout middle school and high school I have been involved in multiple interscholastic sports programs. Besides being involved in sports, I have been activity involved in my town for protecting interscholastic sports from budget cuts as well as physical education programs around the state. My reasoning behind this is due to my strong belief in the importance of promoting health, fitness, leadership, and the drive to do well in school to the entire student body starting at a young age. All of these qualities can be acquired by participating in school sports programs. After gathering and analyzing my articles on this matter, I am fully aware of budget problems schools around the country are experiencing and why they are targeting extracurricular programs. What I do not think school committees are taking into consideration, however, is how important these extracurricular activities are to the students. To many students, extracurricular activities are their main purpose for staying in school and doing well in classes so that they can continue participating in their chosen activity. If such activities are taken away, drop-out rates will skyrocket, school performance rankings will drop significantly, and the overall atmosphere and spirit within schools will turn unhappy and unproductive. If school districts find it absolutely necessary to make cuts in extracurricular activities, I would advise them and hope that they do not cut programs entirely and /or find some way to keep programs alive within the community if not possible through the school. - aristanton
When looking at delinquent behavior and extracurricular activities, I was immediately interested in the topic because of my high school years. Being a student-athlete and service-leadership participant, I realized that most of the other students I worked with were high achieving individuals who never drank, smoked, or committed a crime. I had always believed that these types of students never participated in delinquent acts because they were extremely busy and they knew what could happen to their future. These were kids who had their lives on track and did not want to take the risk of losing all of their hard work. After reviewing the relationship in studies and surveys, it was very clear that there was a huge correlation between delinquent rates and participation in extracurricular activities. While the students who were part of service-leadership groups were less likely to be deviant than student-athletes, both groups were much less likely to commit a crime than someone who didn't participate in extracurricular activities altogether. School budgets, however, label these activities as "expendable" since they are not required for a students education and enrollment in future schooling. I would hope that schools would realize that a majority of their high achieving students are great role models because they have after school programs that allow them to show their true potential. In the future, I hope school communities would take the initiative to fund extracurricular programs in case of a budget crisis. Furthermore, I believe it would be extremely beneficial to students if the community created a greater variety of these activities so every student could have the same chance. - ccapizzano
Overall I was happy about how this project went. Much of my time spent in high school was in the music wing and when there were threats of cutting the music program in my senior year I wondered if I would even stay in school without the arts. Volunteering for me, in my freshman year, was the key to my success in high school. I worked with several other students from the other high schools in my city to build a program called the Volunteens program. After the first year we had over 100 members. I, along with six other members worked at city hall every week with civic leaders. Through the first year we helped get several important bills passed that effect the students in our city. Soon we got the attention of the school board and from then on every school committee meeting the Volunteens were given 15 minutes to address the school board with problems we, and our peers considered important. Volunteering was such an important part of my life in high school and unfortunately similar programs are being cut. Volunteens was cut for budget reasons late into its third year running. I chose this topic to help inform my peers, and anyone who cares to read, about the importance of student community service. The research from the project helped to reinforce my own personal views through scientific studies and articles.- JessicaLopes
I believe that our project went very well and was able to get our point across to the other students about how important extracurricular activities are. In high school I participated in a number of extracurricular activities, from lacrosse to a club called Reality Check and Volunteering as well. Extracurricular activities has nothing but a positive effect on the schools students, while also benefiting the schools overall outlook. It has been proven that extracurricular activities benefits its students and leads to better grades and is more of a motivation for students to come to school. If extracurricular programs were cut from school districts, I think that it would have a negative damper on the students and school at a very rapid pace. Extracurricular activities keep the students going and give them a reason to come to school, as it did for me and many other of my past classmates. The research from this project has helped me understand how important these programs are, as well as helped me inform others about how helpful they are. The ERIC Digest, along with the CQ Researcher and many other reference databases, helped me support my question of if extracurricular activities improves academics. - MarisaMerola
VI. Notes for Next Year's Students
The topic we chose involving the benefits of extracurricular activities is rather broad. We found that there was a large sum of information on the topic itself and on the individual subtopics each of the group members researched. For example, the benefits of sports activities and fine arts programs could have been the overall topic. If any group next year plans to focus on extracurricular activities, be warned that most of the information our group found related to "red button" issues. The opposing viewpoints sight and CQ researcher had plenty of information involving extracurricular activities, but they mostly focused on how the activities relate to violence, drugs, sex, and other topics of that nature. A topic concerning those problems in schools would be advantageous because those issues are quite prevalent today and recent, reputable information could be found with ease. Another group focused on how to make schools green, which is also a popular issue dicussed today. Since three groups have already covered extracurricular activities, it might be wise to expand upon another topic, such as energy conservation or drugs and violence related issues. The No Child Left Behind Act is also a topic of much debate and the text book provided can guide a group toward developing some focused research questions. Good luck!
Extracurricular Activities
I. Description of Problem or Issue
Our issue is determining the importance of extracurricular activities in secondary schools public schools. Extracurricular activities, or after school programs, are nonacademic activities taken outside of the classroom that are pertinent to a student's life. The issue is important because when a schools funding is cut due to inconveniences, the first elements to be taken away from the school are the extracurricular programs since they are expendable when compared to academics. While extracurricular activities provide students social and education opportunities that pertain to his or her interests, they also have been thought to have several other benefits that cannot be obtained through the standard set of core classes. For example, interscholastic sports provide students with physical and healthy activity to develop a healthy lifestyle, teamwork skills, and determination to play and complete to the best of his or her abilities. Student led organizations such as student counsel or event planning committees give students real life situation to develop organization, time management, and leadership skills. Fine arts programs have been researched and found to enhance students' academic performance while service learning activities allow students to help his or her community through volunteer work. We wanted to examine and research these positive benefits for extracurricular activities since we feel they are an essential part of secondary schools and should not be on the chopping block for budget cuts.II. Research Summary
For my research, I focused on finding the benefits of the fine arts programs in schools because they are the target of budget cuts in schools along with other extra curricular activities. The fine arts is a broad subject area, covering visual arts, music, theater programs, and any dance programs a school offers. My research covers a broad ranges of opinions on the matter. Some articles have a strong bias toward supporting the arts and preserving the programs where others present issues from both extremes with counter arguments stating why the art programs should be removed from schools. I found a few unbiased sources which took the form of research reports done at university that presented a large sum of data, most of which displayed that art programs do have positive benefits in mathematics, reading, standardized testing, spatial intelligence, and even in behavior. I used three sources from journal or newspaper sources, one of them was an editorial from the NYTimes. The focus of my sources was different as well, where some focused on the benefits of arts in one respect where others focused on matters such as how the art programs have changed over time. -For my portion of our project, my research focus was on the benefits of interscholastic sport activities. Among all the extracurricular activities being targeted from budget cuts within school systems, sports are always on the top of the list of programs to cut. My research, however, provides evidence that displays the physical and mental benefits, as well as the achievement within the classroom, that student athletes get from participating in sport programs. Out of the five articles I have found and summarized, each article tackles certain issues regarding the benefits of sports, which include how sports aid against child obesity rates, reduce the drop out rate within high schools, and provide students with opportunities that they would not have been able to be exposed to if it was not for the program within their school. Other articles also present new policies that schools are resorting to in order save both the school budget and the sport programs. All my sources vary as far as their main focus and approach to how they defend sport programs, but all strive to show how important sports are to the school, community and individual student. -
For my section in our group project, I focused on extracurricular activities and after school programs, and researched how they improve academic performance. My research covered multiple opinions on how these activities effect students because proving this matter is very difficult. I was able to look at the advantages and disadvantages of extracurricular activities and came to a common consensus that most of the reviews on student organizations were positive. There were a few negative comments in one of the articles I looked at that felt extracurricular activities can lead to alcohol and drug abuse, but that opinion was override by my other articles that had nothing but positive things to say about these programs. I carefully examined each article and summarized its main idea and came up with my own opinion for the article. In my opinion, all of the articles restated the same general idea that extracurricular organizations led to a positive academic career and even improve other things such as likeliness to attend college and attendance rate at schools. Many articles believe that having after school programs causes children to be in school more often, because in many schools, if classes are not attended then they are not allowed to attend the activity after school. Extracurricular programs are a reward after a hard day of school and all of these activities improve academic improvement in one way or another. -
My portion of this project was on volunteering programs in public middle and high schools. Many schools, especially in less affluent districts, have incorporated volunteerism programs into their curriculum. Also, many schools have made community service an obligation and many more have made it into an after school activity. I used the library's databases to find the majority of my articles. I was surprised to find actual academic studies that looked into benefits of young people volunteering in their community. I found it interesting in the ERIC article even in the 1980's similar benefits were expected by youth volunteering to what are seen today. Time published an article that spotlighted the City Year program and its efforts to start volunteering programs early in school. The opposing viewpoint article was a great source of statistics that finally gave some numbers to look at when talking about youth volunteering. Finally, the last journal articles that I looked up were great studies into youth volunteering and its effects on the social development of adolescents. Many studies came to the same conclusion that teenagers engaging in community service were more likely to participate in volunteering, be involved in the community and have a more developed sense of social obligation. -
As for my section in the project, I researched the relationship between extracurricular activities and delinquent behavior in high school students. For the most part, researchers have conducted studies that show positive effects of after school programs like students performing better academically and socially in school . Yet, I am taking it a step further by asking if students are more likely to commit crimes and drink outside of school based on their experiences in school-based programs. Throughout my time researching, I was able to find a variety of articles that express positive and negative views towards the relationship of activities and deviant behavior. Since I am not taking a particular stand on the topic, I view myself as a journalist who is presenting from all sides information to the audience in order for them to make their own decision. A majority of the articles are scientific studies that show students, who take part in athletics or service projects, having lower levels of delinquency due to their commitment and social bonds. Meanwhile, I have heavily opinionated articles that discuss how after school activities do not have significant effects on decreasing crime rates but rather increase these rates. Extracurricular activities are a great way for students to stay in tune with themselves and not succumbing to negative peer influences. After school programs, however, can cause deviant behavior if the programs are not kept in check or regulated. -
II. Group Product Overview
For our presentation our group plans to do the following:Introduction (~5 minutes):
To introduce our topic, our group plans to ask a series of questions to the class about high school. We plan to first ask questions about facts and topics the class was bound to learn in school such as the dates of the civil war, finding the area of a sphere, or knowing the themes presented in Hamlet. There may be a select few in the class who remember, but probably not too many. After those questions are presented, we plan to ask about experiences in extra curricular activists such as participating on a sports team, planning for homecoming, or participating in a program such as DECA. Hopefully, there will be a more positive response to the second set of questions so our group can make a point that students remember those extra curricular experiences as opposed to the core classes. We will then present our topic and briefly state each of our research questions
Teaching Activity (~15 minutes):
For this section of our presentation, each group member will present three multiple choice questions on his or her specific extra curricular area. The questions will be presented in a PowerPoint and the class will try to guess the answer to the facts. After the class guesses, the answer will be displayed and then explained. We hope to find data that is surprising and new to the class so they can hopefully learn new information. The questions will summarize the data collected from the group members to answer his or her research questions.
Conclusion (~5 minutes):
To summarize our findings, the group will discuss the benefits of each of the topic areas. For example, participating in sports helps students learn how to be physically fit and healthy, student led organizations improve leadership skills and collaboration where fine art programs enhance creativity and self-discipline. If there is time left, we will ask the class about their experiences and if they have any questions about our findings.
III. Visual Representations
IV. Research Questions and Reference Summaries
Main Question: How are extracurricular activities important in American secondary schools?
V. Group Reaction/Opinion(s) about Issue
Majority Opinion:
After completing our research and discussing our topic, our group has come to the general consensus that extracurricular activities play an important role in each high school. Therefore, they should not be targeted when budget cuts occur. Depending on the individual extracurricular activity chosen by each student, the benefits vary from overall health to self discipline. We all has some preconceptions about our activities' benefits, which provided us with a direction to research. However, despite the preconceived notions, we were surprised with the results we found, not realizing how often this topic has been researched and the broad array of results provided. We learned that this topic is very vast and can be broken down in so many ways from broad aspects such as level of education (high schools, middle schools, elementary schools), to looking at the students of different regions, states and cities. There are many factors we found as well concerning our subtopics where researched tested to see if student-led organizations or athletics, for example, effected drop-out rate, grades, testing, social characteristics, etc. We found data that both supported extracurricular activities and some that thought they were unnecessary, or they just didn't have any benefits. These opposing points help to obtain a broad understanding of the issue and the possibility to provide rebuttals if we ever were asked to argue whether extracurricular activities are beneficial or not.
Individual Opinions:
As a long-time participant in the fine arts programs myself, I went into my research with a heavy bias. For general research, this is not a practical habit, but I feel it helped me find reputable sources on my matter as well as properly identify differing views. In high school for my Capstone project, I focused on if music improved spatial intelligence, mathematics and self-discipline. Along with research I did, for my final product I gave out a sptail intellegence test to kids in music classes and those who were not, collecting data from about 20-30 students in each. After compiling the scores, the scatter plot I made has a best fit line that stated the more years of music education, the higher the spatial intelligence. Even with that work in high school, this project allowed me to look through new and reputable databases for professional articles,which was a great and positive experience. Seeing as how they already started to cut music programs back in my hometown of Coventry, I was further inspired to explore the benefits of those arts programs being taken away. I understand many school are struggling financially and I do not think they should just terminate programs, yet I do not think they should not take action either. Instead of taking hasty action, I think decisions involving extracurricular activities should be better thought out, because the programs do not need to be cut completely as the only solution. -
I took an especially passionate approach to this project and my specific question of sports, because all throughout middle school and high school I have been involved in multiple interscholastic sports programs. Besides being involved in sports, I have been activity involved in my town for protecting interscholastic sports from budget cuts as well as physical education programs around the state. My reasoning behind this is due to my strong belief in the importance of promoting health, fitness, leadership, and the drive to do well in school to the entire student body starting at a young age. All of these qualities can be acquired by participating in school sports programs. After gathering and analyzing my articles on this matter, I am fully aware of budget problems schools around the country are experiencing and why they are targeting extracurricular programs. What I do not think school committees are taking into consideration, however, is how important these extracurricular activities are to the students. To many students, extracurricular activities are their main purpose for staying in school and doing well in classes so that they can continue participating in their chosen activity. If such activities are taken away, drop-out rates will skyrocket, school performance rankings will drop significantly, and the overall atmosphere and spirit within schools will turn unhappy and unproductive. If school districts find it absolutely necessary to make cuts in extracurricular activities, I would advise them and hope that they do not cut programs entirely and /or find some way to keep programs alive within the community if not possible through the school. -
When looking at delinquent behavior and extracurricular activities, I was immediately interested in the topic because of my high school years. Being a student-athlete and service-leadership participant, I realized that most of the other students I worked with were high achieving individuals who never drank, smoked, or committed a crime. I had always believed that these types of students never participated in delinquent acts because they were extremely busy and they knew what could happen to their future. These were kids who had their lives on track and did not want to take the risk of losing all of their hard work. After reviewing the relationship in studies and surveys, it was very clear that there was a huge correlation between delinquent rates and participation in extracurricular activities. While the students who were part of service-leadership groups were less likely to be deviant than student-athletes, both groups were much less likely to commit a crime than someone who didn't participate in extracurricular activities altogether. School budgets, however, label these activities as "expendable" since they are not required for a students education and enrollment in future schooling. I would hope that schools would realize that a majority of their high achieving students are great role models because they have after school programs that allow them to show their true potential. In the future, I hope school communities would take the initiative to fund extracurricular programs in case of a budget crisis. Furthermore, I believe it would be extremely beneficial to students if the community created a greater variety of these activities so every student could have the same chance. -
Overall I was happy about how this project went. Much of my time spent in high school was in the music wing and when there were threats of cutting the music program in my senior year I wondered if I would even stay in school without the arts. Volunteering for me, in my freshman year, was the key to my success in high school. I worked with several other students from the other high schools in my city to build a program called the Volunteens program. After the first year we had over 100 members. I, along with six other members worked at city hall every week with civic leaders. Through the first year we helped get several important bills passed that effect the students in our city. Soon we got the attention of the school board and from then on every school committee meeting the Volunteens were given 15 minutes to address the school board with problems we, and our peers considered important. Volunteering was such an important part of my life in high school and unfortunately similar programs are being cut. Volunteens was cut for budget reasons late into its third year running. I chose this topic to help inform my peers, and anyone who cares to read, about the importance of student community service. The research from the project helped to reinforce my own personal views through scientific studies and articles.-
I believe that our project went very well and was able to get our point across to the other students about how important extracurricular activities are. In high school I participated in a number of extracurricular activities, from lacrosse to a club called Reality Check and Volunteering as well. Extracurricular activities has nothing but a positive effect on the schools students, while also benefiting the schools overall outlook. It has been proven that extracurricular activities benefits its students and leads to better grades and is more of a motivation for students to come to school. If extracurricular programs were cut from school districts, I think that it would have a negative damper on the students and school at a very rapid pace. Extracurricular activities keep the students going and give them a reason to come to school, as it did for me and many other of my past classmates. The research from this project has helped me understand how important these programs are, as well as helped me inform others about how helpful they are. The ERIC Digest, along with the CQ Researcher and many other reference databases, helped me support my question of if extracurricular activities improves academics. -
VI. Notes for Next Year's Students
The topic we chose involving the benefits of extracurricular activities is rather broad. We found that there was a large sum of information on the topic itself and on the individual subtopics each of the group members researched. For example, the benefits of sports activities and fine arts programs could have been the overall topic. If any group next year plans to focus on extracurricular activities, be warned that most of the information our group found related to "red button" issues. The opposing viewpoints sight and CQ researcher had plenty of information involving extracurricular activities, but they mostly focused on how the activities relate to violence, drugs, sex, and other topics of that nature. A topic concerning those problems in schools would be advantageous because those issues are quite prevalent today and recent, reputable information could be found with ease. Another group focused on how to make schools green, which is also a popular issue dicussed today. Since three groups have already covered extracurricular activities, it might be wise to expand upon another topic, such as energy conservation or drugs and violence related issues. The No Child Left Behind Act is also a topic of much debate and the text book provided can guide a group toward developing some focused research questions. Good luck!